What is a Chinese birth chart?
It is the moment you were born, written in 8 ancient Chinese characters. Your year, month, day and hour each get 2: a sky sign on top and an animal sign below.
Every character carries one of the five elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal or Water. Western astrology maps the planets. The Chinese birth chart reads how those five elements feed and tame (hold back) each other in your birth moment. People in China have read charts this way for well over a thousand years.
The sky sign of your day is the most important one. It is your core element, the part of the chart that stands for you. Everything else is read against it.
What this calculator shows
- Your 8 characters, with plain English next to each one. Months follow the sun's 24 seasons, not the calendar month.
- Your core element and whether it is the Yang or the Yin form.
- Your mix of the five elements, including the elements hiding inside each animal sign.
- The strongest force in your chart, read from your birth month the classical way.
- Your guardian spirit: your core element paired with that force, one of 80.
For the curious: the classical names
Formally this is BaZi (八字) or the Four Pillars of Destiny (四柱命理). The 4 pairs are the pillars, each a Heavenly Stem over an Earthly Branch. Your core element is the Day Master; the strongest force is the month structure (格局), read with the Ziping method. The full method, including what we simplify, is in how we calculate.
